Christie Blatchford: The disaster that ended in Ashley Smith's death began with prison bureaucrats' directive

Shock over Ashley Smith video stands in contrast to initial reactions

If Canadians are outraged by the recent release of video depicting teenager Ashley Smith’s treatment in the federal prison system, it stands in stark contrast to how authorities reacted both before and after her death.

“The reaction from Canadians is precisely what the family hoped would happen when the truth began to come out,” Julian Falconer, the lawyer for Smith’s family, said Thursday.

Estimating that as many as a million people may now have watched the video that he was finally able to release at coroner’s court this week, and which was then posted on major media websites, Mr. Falconer said wearily, “Today is a very welcome day.”

He was particularly heartened by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s taking notice of the case in the House of Commons Thursday and calling Smith’s treatment “completely unacceptable.”

The video made public this week is a compilation from prison surveillance videotape, and shows Smith being duct-tapped into an airplane seat during one inter-prison transfer and being repeatedly forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs at the Joliette Institution in Joliette, Que.

The 19-year-old teenager died Oct. 19, 2007, in her segregation cell at Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institute for Women.

There, and at prisons across the country, Smith was well-known as one of the system’s most difficult-to-manage inmates.

She had a well-documented habit of “tying up,” or knotting makeshift ligatures around her neck, and sometimes cutting herself.

During her first stay at Grand Valley in the spring of 2007, whenever she tied up like this, guards would rush into her cell to cut off the ligatures.

These life-saving efforts weren’t always met with gratitude, but sometimes by a furious reaction, such as spitting and biting from Smith, who was about 200 pounds and stood five-foot, seven inches tall. Smith was moved out of Grand Valley for the summer, but returned on Aug. 31 that year — one of 17 such transfers that took her to nine different federal institutions in five provinces.

But unknown to her, and over the objections of her handlers, the rules had changed — now guards were under strict orders not to enter her cell “as long as she was breathing,” as one of them testified at a 2008 preliminary hearing.

Prison bureaucrats were unhappy at the vast number of use-of-force reports these interventions generated — during Smith’s time at Grand Valley, for instance, there were more such incidents involving her than there had been at the entire prison in the previous decade — and pressured managers to reduce the numbers, who in turn pressured guards to monitor Smith from a distance instead of rushing into her cell.

It was a recipe for the very disaster that unfolded — guards who were “counselled,” or disciplined, for too quickly going to Smith’s aid and were now rendered timid and uncertain, and Smith unaware that the very ground under her had shifted.

In fact, as transcripts from the preliminary hearing reveal, there was a virtual dry run of Smith’s last night just 11 days before she died.

On Oct. 8 that year, she had tied up eight times, one after another.

Guards, seeing that she was cutting her wrist with glass and “painting” a makeshift ligature with her own blood and tying it on her neck, called a manager for the OK to enter her cell — and were told not to do so until the manager arrived.

“She could have died during that period of time, right?” Mr. Rubel asked.

“Yes,” she said.

She admitted that it was “a frequent direction” to the guards not to enter Smith’s cell “as long as she is breathing.”

The preliminary was held to determine if there were grounds to proceed with charges of criminal negligence causing death that were laid against three guards and a manager after Smith died.

The charges were dropped after Ontario Court Judge D.G. Carr heard the evidence of the stark change in policy.

It was in October of 2010 that Mr. Falconer wrote William Elliott, then RCMP Commissioner, to beg that the force conduct a criminal investigation into whether the managers ought to be charged, either with assault, unlawful confinement or administering a stupefying drug.

The lawyer thoughtfully included excerpts of transcripts from the guards’ testimony at the preliminary hearing, as well as from two reports, one by the independent correctional investigator Howard Sapers and one by a psychiatrist Mr. Sapers had asked to review Smith’s medical records.

Mr. Falconer, who is a criminal lawyer, told Mr. Elliott that because Smith was moved about the country’s prisons, and the RCMP is a national force, only the Mounties had jurisdiction.

But three months later, RCMP Superintendent Paul Bateman replied for the force, telling Mr. Falconer the RCMP “respectfully disagree” with his view and that either the local Waterloo Regional Police or the Sûreté du Québec should investigate, as Grand Valley and Joliette were in their jurisdictions.

The Waterloo probe resulted in no charges, and the Quebec provincial police reviewed some of the Joliette video evidence and ruled the repeated injections of anti-psychotics were “a medical decision.”

Astonishingly, the Sûreté officer, Sergeant Mario Laflamme, made that decision despite never having seen Ashley Smith’s medical file.

“That’s the ultimate joke,” Mr. Falconer said Thursday.

“If they’d asked, the family would have given a consent [to get the file]. They were the ones who wanted the investigation.”